Leslie Sharp

Might he have been thinking about his Civil Rights Act? Kennedy was pro-government. He was anti-toxic individuals using the cloak of government intelligence agencies and military to advance their extreme right, neo-fascist ideology. In addition to Dulles, Hoover, consider LeMay, Walker, Lemnitzer, Decker et al.

I agree, Tom. Bentley is another example. Odum is of particular concern as he is the primary candidate for "caretaker" identified in the 1963 datebook maintained by Pierre Lafitte.

90% of the info in the book was already published by William Torbett in the Torbett document back in the 70's. If you mean Torbitt, that's laughable. Choosing to ignore the detail found in the 1963 datebook maintained by Pierre Lafitte as presented in Coup in Dallas suggests that, similar to Greg Doudna, you haven't actually read the book or perhaps you're attempting to divert attention from the revelations therein? You buy into Carlson's recent cherry picked analysis of January 6 knowing that he acknowledged behind the scenes that the Stop the Steal claims were absurd — Stop the Steal launched by Roger Stone and promoted heavily by your mentor Posobiec? Why am I surprised when it was Stone who first infiltrated the Kennedy assassination camp with the distorted ideology that dominates so many forums today. Censoring the use of the term N a z i speaks volumes. There was a time when a majority of those who pursued the facts of the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy in Dallas did so because they were aligned with Kennedy's political ideology. I wonder if you have a full grasp on what he stood for.

Matthew, Let me know if you find anything in the Postscript that is factually incorrect. I could rebut your assertions point by point, but if you rely on Jack Posobiec as an intellectual, ideological authority figure, I suspect any detailed discussion between us would be an exercise in futility. Perhaps if you haven’t, you might read Frances Stonor Saunders.

So I would suggest it be removed from the JFK debate section. Rather than remove this thread from the JFK debate section, why not get it back on track? Decades of obsession with the Cuban angle of the assassination of President Kennedy detracted from serious consideration that the plot was international in scale. Lori's thread provides a unique opportunity to consider the assassination in Dallas in context of current global events, the continuity of the coup. ' . . . Interviewed twice by author [H. P.] Albarelli, [Spas] Raikin said that he didn’t tell the Oswalds that he held a high-ranking position with the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. The ABN was strongly supported by[General Charles] Willoughby since its formation in Munich, Germany in 1946. Confirming that SS Otto Skorzeny and General Charles Willoughby were at the very least aware of one another prior to Willoughby’s trips to Spain that began in the early 1950s, was their mutual associations with radical far right Ukrainians. During WWII, leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Yaroslav Stetsko and Stepan Bandera had been held in the central Berlin prison at Spandau from September 15, 1941 to January 1942. In June 1941, Stetsko had announced the formation of a Ukrainian state which was intended to align itself closely with the N a z i s. Said Stetsko: “We will closely cooperate with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its leader Adolf Hitler, which is forming a new order in Europe and the world.” By April 1944, Otto Skorzeny had sought out both Stetsko and Bandera “to discuss plans for diversions and sabotage against the Soviet Army.” The two were released by the German authorities in September, and as planned with Skorzeny, began organizing the native populace to fight the advancing Soviet Army. According to historian Stephen Dorril, by 1946, the OUN-B’s secret police was conducting an assassination campaign in western Germany. Ultimately, the OUN comprised the largest contingent within the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), which enjoyed significant support of General Charles Willoughby from its founding in 1946 in Munich. As may be suspected by some readers, the ABN was also strongly supported by the CIA whose files are extensive on the group, as is correspondence between Allen Dulles and ABN leaders. In fact, according to CIA documents dated 1957, Raikin was a contract agent for the CIA, having been cleared for hire by the Office of Security. The initial use of Raikin was in service of a project utilizing unwitting agents, but by 1960 Raikin was fully aware of his attachment to the Agency. In the minds of fascist-leaning politicians and power brokers in the US, Ukraine was the geographical bulwark against renewed Soviet aggression. (emphasis added.) Ultraright Ukrainians Bandera and Stetsko were the human face of that rabid anti-Communism. On October 15, 1959, which coincidentally was the day Lee Oswald boarded a train from Helsinki to Moscow on the final leg of his defection, a twenty-eight-year-old KGB assassin, Bohdan Stashynsky is alleged to have assassinated Ukraine Nationalist Stepan Bandera in Munich. On trial in Munich in 1962, prosecutors presented the most persuasive version of the murder: Stashynsky had used a spray gun to dispense a lethal but undetectable poison which induced symptoms that mimicked heart attack. On Tuesday, September 12, Pierre makes a note SPRAY-GUN 2 WILLOUGHBY-SHAW? The sheets from a ledger that author Albarelli gained access to further indicate the significance of “spray guns” in Pierre Lafitte’s world in 1963. As mentioned previously, in one ledger entry, Lafitte notes, “Walker team - spray guns - at least 5...” Another reads, “ . . . Rothermel says no on gas [strike through] guns but T says ok (Stash)... Walker says yes spray guns. Willoughby? “ According to a recent book by Professor of Ukrainian History Serhii Plokhy, "The Man with the Poison Gun: A Cold War Spy Story," Stashynsky’s career as a triggerman for the KGB played out against the backdrop of the fight for Ukrainian independence after the Second World War. “. . . Bohdan was a member of the underground resistance against the Soviet occupation, but was forced to become an informer for the secret police after his family was threatened. After he betrayed a resistance cell . . . [he] was ostracized by his family and was offered the choice of continuing his higher education, which he could no longer afford, or joining the secret police.” Bohdan said later, “It was [only] a proposal, but I had no alternative to accepting it and continuing to work for the NKVD. By now, there was no way back for me.” Stashynsky received advanced training in Kyiv and Moscow for clandestine work in the West and became one of Moscow’s most prized assets.” Professor P. D. Scott was also the first to draw attention to the significance of the death of OUN’s Stepan Bandera in context of the assassination of President Kennedy. Bandera died at the hands of Soviet agent Bohdan Stashynsky. Scott notes that the assassination of Bandera was exploited by Ukrainian Nationalists and ABN spokesmen to demonstrate the importance of the opposition of the OUN and the ABN to any rapprochement between the American and Soviet governments which was being advanced during the Kennedy administration, especially the president’s perceived conciliatory policies following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just two weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, one of those American pro-Ukrainian spokesmen, former Representative Charles Kersten of Wisconsin who had served as a member of the Steering Committee of the World Anti-communist League (WACL), “began to develop the picture of a Soviet assassin conspiracy.” Kersten had been researcher and assistant in the office of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy during the hearings. Scott also tells us that “while in New Orleans in [the late spring and summer of] 1963, Oswald was linked to Americans who were in touch with the Latin American elements of Kersten’s Steering Committee of the WACL, including Maurice B. Gatlin who was involved with a right-wing group at the address used by Oswald for his ‘Fair Play for Cuba Committee.’” Gatlin, in 1958, had attended a Congress that included the chairman of the American Friends of the ABN, Nestor Procyk. Two years later, Dr. Procyk, a physician practicing in Buffalo New York, was in direct communication with (Ret.) General Charles Willoughby. In his September 2, 1960 letter, Dr. Procyk tells Willoughby that he and “…Mr. Stetsko [Ukrainian rightist leader of the ABN and OUN] fully appreciated the retired general’s noble efforts…” A month later, Stetsko writes to Willoughby directly under the letterhead of the Central Committee of the ABN, Süddeutsche Bank, A.G, Branch Munich.' (emphasis added.) — Coup in Dallas:The Decisive Investigation into Who Killed JFK by H. P. Albarelli Jr. with Leslie Sharp and Alan Kent. *** A little known fact is that Stetsko arrived in the US in October 1963 with the stated agenda to relocate his headquarters from Munich to DC.

It would seem that failure to depose is no less egregious than changing testimony in an investigation of this magnitude.

As Bill Simpich observes, Odum was the only agent who denied the existence of the note. We argue Odum was hardly playing bit parts but that he was actually at the center of a number of issues ... accompanying the rifle from the TSBD, witnessing Oswald's arrest at the theatre in the middle of a manhunt for the president's assassin, interviewing at least one witness at the scene of the shooting of a DPD officer in spite of his responsibilities as a Federal Agent, familiar personally with Ruth and Michael Paine, involved in the initial search of their home, recipient of the photo from MC and subsequent attempt(s) to interview Marguerite and Marina, photographed with Marina and her new born and the translator to indicate he remained in contact with Marina, etc. etc.

Gerry, Bardwell Odum affadavit, Sepember 24, 1975 Until certain newspaper publicity about thirty days [ago] I had never heard any reference made to a note suposedly [sic] left by Lee Harvey Oswald for SA James P. Hosty. I am quite positive I have never heard anything evidentiary, gossip-wise, fourth-hand or otherwise about the existence of any such note until the year 1975. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=118884#relPageId=204 I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the salient issue raised in my post — why wasn't SA Bard Odum called to testify before the WC? I believe the question is somewhat parallel to the concerns you raise in topic of this thread.

Matthew, your apparent black and white analysis of the crisis suggests you've not studied the history. And I'm fairly certain your assessment of my personal opinion is superficial at best. Seven Decades of National Socialist Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret An interview with Russ Bellant, author of Old National Socialists, the New Right, and the Republican Party, by Paul H. Rosenberg and Foreign Policy In Focus. The Nation. March 28, 2014. ‘ . . the history of the region is a history of competing villains vying against one another; and one school of villains—the National Socialists—have a long history of engagement with the United States, mostly below the radar, but occasionally exposed, as they were by Russ Bellant in his book Old National Socialists, the New Right, and the Republican Party (South End Press, 1991). Bellant's exposure of émigré National Socialist leaders from Germany's World War II allies in the 1988 Bush presidential campaign was the driving force in the announced resignation of nine individuals, two of them from Ukraine, which is why he was the logical choice to illuminate the scattered mentions of National Socialist and fascist elements among the Ukrainian nationalists, which somehow never seems to warrant further comment or explanation. Of course most Ukrainians aren’t National Socialists or fascists—all the more reason to illuminate those who would hide their true natures in the shadows…or even behind the momentary glare of the spotlight.’ (emphasis added)— Paul H. Rosenberg Rosenberg asks Bellant . . . Your book discusses a central figure in the OUN, Yaroslav Stetsko, who was politically active for decades here in America. What can you tell us about his history? Russ Bellant: Yaroslav Stetsko was the number-two leader of the OUN during World War II and thereafter. In 1959, Stepan Bandera, who was head of the OUN, was killed, and that’s when Stetsko assumed the leadership. Stetsko was the guy who actually marched into Lvov with the German army on June 30, 1941. The OUN issued a proclamation at that time under his name praising and calling for glory to the German leader Adolf Hitler and how they’re going to march arm in arm for Ukraine and so forth. After the war, he was part of the key leadership that got picked up by the Americans. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/seven-decades-National Socialist-collaboration-americas-dirty-little-ukraine-secret/?fbclid=IwAR2PMgyqipYVYxEhuovzyOiclE-rxQCkK8QKq-yAv5CGpNG1uwWFBVUTnOQ"Seven Decades of National Socialist Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret" Further to the relevance of Bellant’s 1991 revelations in context of the current Ukraine – Russia crisis, and the long-overlooked implications of Ukraine fascists and N-a-z-i sympathizers in the shadows of the assassination of President Kennedy, the following excerpt from Coup in Dallas . . . ' . . . [Sy] Hersh observes that [Clark] Mollenhoff, who had covered labor corruption during the 1950s, had been an enthusiastic supporter of Bobby Kennedy’s work as general counsel of the Senate Rackets Committee. Writes Hersh, “The two men had grown apart—the specifics of their dispute could not be learned for this book—and the increasingly conservative [emphasis added] Mollenhoff begun to write extensively, and critically, of the Kennedy administration’s decision in late 1962 to bypass Boeing and award the TFX contract to General Dynamics. Writes Hersh, Mollenhoff’s reporting “was taken most seriously by Bobby Kennedy.” Indeed, reporter [Clark] Mollenhoff’s conservative leaning was apparent in public settings when in October of 1962 he participated on a panel, “Washington Cover-Up” at Georgetown University alongside the president of the Ukraine Congress Committee of America (UCCA) and Georgetown economics professor Lev Dobriansky, evidenced in a photo in The Ukraine Weekly. In ensuing years, Mollenhoff was not shy about his commitment to anti-communism. A brief mention in an article dated Saturday, April 20, 1974, in The Ukraine Weekly, under the headline, “Anti-communist League Holds 7th Conference In Washington,” provides a window into his public support of the World Anti-communist League (WACL). Hosted in D.C. by the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF), the conference boasted some twenty-five speakers, representing both free nations and countries under Communist suppression, including autocrat General Anastazio Somoza of Nicaragua and the Hon. Yaroslav Stetsko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine and head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) since its inception as well as leader of the Organization of Ukranian Nationalists (OUN). The US affiliate of the Stetsko’s ABN, The American Friends of Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations is infamous among Kennedy researchers for its leading member, Spas Raikin who traveled from Ohio to Hoboken, NJ to meet Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife Marina as they arrived from the USSR. Among the US speakers at the 1974 WACL conference were prominent Republicans including future congressman John McCain, conservative journalist William F. Buckley, and Prof. Dobriansky. The lengthy article in The Ukraine Weekly continues to describe the events, “The first reception, hosted by three members of the American press, John Chamberlain, King Features Syndicate columnist, Robert Hurleigh, Mutual Broadcasting System columnist, and Clark Mollenhoff, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and Washington Bureau Chief of the "Des Moines Register and Star," was held at the National Press Club.” Of interest to researchers in pursuit of significant domestic and foreign intrigues in the decades following the assassination implicating yet another web of ideologically aligned forces, at the time of the 1974 WACL conference, the Cowles Communication / Des Moines Register board included Ret. General George Olmsted, close friend to Rear Admiral Arleigh Burke who resigned from the navy before President Kennedy had served a full year as president. Olmsted was the force behind the financial empire that within the decade would be caught up in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal. Later in this investigation, the network of WACL and Stetsko’s ABN, tied to the assassination of Ukranian Stepan Bandera—who led the OUN said to be most closely aligned with Mussolini’s fascism before his assassination, and their affiliation with General Charles Willoughby who is named frequently by Lafitte—will assume greater significance . . .' It should be noted that Mollenhoff was responsible for advancing the rumors of John Kennedy’s liaisons with East German femme fatale Ellen Rometsch.

What "J6 Afterword" are you referring to, Matthew?

In addition to altering testimonies, what about those who were never called to testify? Despite Dallas FBI SA Bardwell Odum’s follow through with Silvia Odio’s claims, including at least one interview with her, Odum was never called to testify before the Warren Commission . . . However, as revealed in the following snippet of her testimony before the commission, in a scene worthy of the film The Godfather, Odum hovered: Mr. LIEBELER. Did you say that you also started working at a new job that same day? Mrs. ODIO. No, sir. Mr. LIEBELER. But you had been working on the day that you did move? Mrs. ODIO. I started working initially the 15th of September, because it was too far away where I lived in Irving. I started the 15th of September, I am almost sure of the 15th or the 9th. Let me see what day was the 9th. It was a Monday. It was the 9th, sir, that I started working at National Chemsearch. (Special Agent Bardwell Odum of the Federal Bureau of Investigation entered the hearing room.) Mr. LIEBELER. This is Mr. Odum from the FBI. As a matter of fact, Mr. Odum was the man that interviewed you. Mrs. ODIO. I remember. He looked very familiar. Mr. [LIEBELER]. What is the name? Mr. [sic] ODIO. I interview so many people, it slips my mind at the moment. Agent Odum left the hearing room… Little more can be said about the high strangeness of Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Bardwell Dewitt Odum leaving the Warren Commission hearing room without being invited to testify. — Coup in Dallas… So, why should Odum be called before the Warren Commission? *** In a July 1998 volume of the The Fourth Decade, a highly regarded publication focused on the assassination, researcher Raymond F. Gallagher presented a brilliant exposé of Special Agent Odum titled “The Ubiquitous Bard.” According to Gallagher, from the moment Odum ascended the stairway to the 6th floor of the TSBD to witness the recovery of the alleged murder rifle, he was an ever-present fixture in advancing Oswald as the lone gunman. Less than an hour after the rifle discovery, Bard Odum, along with Lt. Day of the Dallas Police Department, was photographed leaving the depository building with the alleged rifle used by an alleged assassin from the sniper’s nest. Lt. Day later stated that en route to headquarters, SA Odum had used his car radio to contact the Dallas FBI office and described the rifle. As Gallagher pointed out in 1998, there didn’t seem to be a record of this communication, but there is no doubt that early descriptions of the rifle set in motion rampant confusion as to the official identification of the alleged weapon. Odum, an agent of the federal government, was at the DPD headquarters only briefly before dashing to the Texas Theater where a suspect in the shooting of a Dallas police officer was about to be apprehended. It has yet to be explained what prompted Odum to attend that particular arrest in the middle of what should have been the most aggressive manhunt in the nation’s history. Why would his boss, SAC Gordon Shanklin pull one of his prize protégés from the search for Kennedy’s assassin to pursue a local shooting, unless of course, Shanklin had already been advised that Lee Oswald would not only be charged with gunning down Officer J.D. Tippit, but that he would soon be charged with the assassination of Kennedy. Once Oswald was in custody at the Texas Theatre, Odum, instead of tracking federal arrests being made in critical hours of the assassination, inexplicably spent another hour and a half in pursuit of the Tippit shooting along with nearly a dozen DPD staff. Federal detentions in the Dallas area during that twenty-four hour period—persons of interest to the Feds since the spring of 1963—stand out: Jean Rene Souetre and Michel Mertz and possibly Michel Roux. Rather than being ordered to question Souetre and or Mertz or Roux, Odum seems focused on Tippit’s murder, even taking time to interview Helen Markham who had witnessed a young male fleeing the scene. In another rarely heralded essay published in the Fourth Decade in 1997, researcher Tom Wallace Lyons summed up Odum’s early influence over the Tippit investigation, asserting that Odum sewed the confusion that contributed to Markham being labeled as an inconsistent, unreliable witness for decades to come. In another noteworthy timeline, while Odum is biding time in Oak Cliff, pursuing a case that was technically outside his jurisdiction, Lee Oswald’s various addresses were being nailed down at the school book depository. Meanwhile, Oswald was being driven to police headquarters in Car Number 2 under the custody of Jerry Hill and his colleagues. According to Bill Simpich, another researcher who has long recognized that the elusive Bard demands close scrutiny, Jerry Hill had been on the sixth floor of the depository building when Mannlicher-Carcano shells were found and reported as a match to the rifle that Bard Odum escorted to police headquarters. Either the police department and the FBI were stretched thin that afternoon, or this was one of numerous serendipitous coincidences that would unfold in the next few days. Once Lee Oswald was identified as AWOL during an alleged formal roll call of depository employees, and once his addresses were known, including that of the Paines, Odum seems to have finally returned his keen eye to the assassination, and with every subsequent step he took, the profile of the lone nut commie suspect was advanced. . . . [Bill] Simpich reminds us that J. Walton Moore, agent in charge of the CIA’s Dallas office, was a college roommate of Wallace Heitman. It was Moore that introduced George de Mohrenschildt to the returned “defector,” Oswald, and Moore and de Mohrenschildt shared a friendship with Texas oilman and former WWI Col. Lawrence Orlov who is named in the Lafitte datebook. CIA agent Heitman’s buddy, SA Odum was teamed up that evening with James Hosty, the agent assigned to Oswald since his return from the Soviet Union and infamous for having destroyed an alleged note from Oswald in the weeks prior to the assassination. Odum was the only agent to later claim that Hosty’s story about the Oswald note was erroneous. Ruth Paine soon changed her assessment of the note to align with Bard’s by insisting that the note was yet “another lie” told by Lee. When the photos arrived from Mexico City, after cropping any vestiges of the embassy building behind the image of a man in the photo that they intended to present to Marina for identification, the Hosty/Odum team proceeded to the motel in Garland, north of downtown, to confront her. Enter Marguerite Oswald who ran interference that night, and refused to allow Odum to interrogate either of the two women. Despite those seeming early unpleasantries, a photo of the Bard facing Marina who is cradling her newborn (see photo section of this book), attests to the FBI agent’s persistence. It also reveals that Ilya Mamantov was no longer her translator. The woman in the middle of the photo has been identified as a skilled Russian translator. Apparently Ilya had served his purpose. Over the ensuing months, while CIA’s Heitman relentlessly pursued a very vulnerable Marina, pressuring her to confirm the latest official version of the investigation, whatever version that was, Bardwell would have cordial visits with Ruth Paine and Michael at least ten more times. In fact, Ruth referred to Bardwell as her “primary contact”; Freudian slip perhaps, or, it is also possible that both she and Michael were always kept in the dark. Researcher Gallagher additionally draws attention to Ruth’s testimony which indicates that Agent Odum was involved in the seizure of Lee’s wedding ring—a ring that in the following decades would serve as centerpiece of the Sixth Floor Museum, ensconced in a plexiglass case positioned dead center in the passageway through the main floor. The ring has been a nuanced symbol advancing the pathos of the lone gun assassin in the minds of millions upon millions of visitors to the Dealey Plaza over decades. Odum also pursued employees at the Texas Employment Commission responsible for placing Oswald in several jobs. One of those TEC employees made a permanent move from the area she had lived in for decades within months of Odum’s interviews. Some suggest she was terrified. Also, it was Odum who ordered construction of a replica of the alleged bag that concealed the alleged weapon, from materials found in the depository shipping room, to show to Wesley Buel Frazier, the Paine's neighbor and Lee's ride to work the morning of November 22. There can be little doubt that Bard was hell bent on perpetuating the case against the patsy, Lee Oswald. Researcher/author Simpich also references records that indicate the confusion facilitated by Odum around the identification of a Minox camera discovered in the Paines’ garage, discrepancies that were fueled by Michael Paine’s sudden realization that the camera was his. Simpich then reminds us of perhaps the most intriguing fact relevant to the pursuit of the real caretaker: SA Odum and Oswald had shared the same Irving barber, Cliff Shasteen. Absent the official records of Odum’s work schedule throughout 1963 to determine who he may or may not have been assigned, Shasteen provides perhaps the single most solid clue in support of the hypothesis that Odum was the Oswald caretaker named by Lafitte beginning in March 1963. *** And yet, those responsible for determining who would be called before the Warren Commission apparently found no justification for adding SA Bard Odum to the list?

https://russbaker.substack.com/p/does-it-really-matter-whether-a-violent

As did we, Chuck. If you have the book, you know the coincidence of the location of his death and who owned that gravel facility and how that detail oddly connects to Sylvia Odio. Granted, D-FW and the surrounding region (to include Bridgeport) was a "small world" in 1963, but the odds Davis would die at a TxI operation owned by the Rogers family who took Odio under their wing seem pretty high.

Steve, the March 13, 1964 cablegram has been released unredacted, has it not?

That's right, Chuck. Based on the Davis's timeline, and considered in context of surrounding entries in Lafitte's datebook we deduced that the Davis couple traveled to Madrid to meet arms dealer Victor Oswald and his buddy Otto Skorzeny. They carried with them schematics of Dealey.

Roger, Gary reiterated yesterday, To my knowledge we have only my memos from my telephone conversations. If there were any official reports, l have not seen them. And yes, Pierre Lafitte identified the pilot as Silverthorne . . . From Coup in Dallas . . . ‘ . . . As the FBI agents that spoke with [Dr.] Alderson remarked, this plane, part of a CIA proprietary, was technically a “government plane.” According to [Pierre] Lafitte, the private plane that carried Souetre from Dallas was piloted by Joseph Silverthorne. The Pilot [on November 15, 1963, Pierre Lafitte noted in his datebook the following:] /Nov 22/ Willoughby backup team [the word team has a strike through] squad- tech building-- phone booth/bridge O says turn them* Silverthorne- Ft. Worth -Airport Mexico —Lafitte datebook, November 15 Silverthorne, a long-mysterious name that also appears in William Harvey’s infamous, handwritten QJ/WIN notes, is Joseph “Joe” Silverthorne, a former member of the OSS and a CIA asset, who had the wide reputation of being an incredibly daring bush and cargo pilot, and an occasional and trusted assassin. Silverthorne flew over 250 flights for United Fruit Co. in the 1950s. He traveled “for a certain federal agency” to “countless countries” for “reasons best left unsaid.” He said: “Bill Harvey was my friend; I never made fun of him. You don’t do that with friends.” (Albarelli’s Florida interview with Silverthorne.) *we have laterally considered the possibility this reads "O says turn at Elm", an update that may appear in the softcover edition of Coup once the examiner makes a final call.

Roger, I'm curious if you've seen evidence of INS direct involvement in the stonewalling in 1964, or are you referring to FBI/CIA documents that indicate INS had been consulted? Where are the INS records of the 11/22 detention and expulsion?

Souetre used the alias Roux, as noted by French authorities in communication with US agencies, so I don't understand the argument that because Roux was 5'8" tall. I could see that he would not be "identical" with Souetre, who was 6'1".

Yes, I've studied Fensterwald's documents and spoken at length on several occasions with his co-investigator Gary Shaw. My question is whether the INS Dallas filed a report related to detention of French citizen(s) on November 22/23. Have you seen that report? I'm also somewhat curious why you won't engage in discussion of the revelations published by Major Ganis related to Souetre's association with SS Otto Skorzeny?

Gary Shaw reiterated that to his knowledge, there is no INS report from Dallas. He does have his memos from phone conversations with the agent. So, how did Paris know about the expulsion? Btw, one of the photos included in the March 1964 request from French authorities is the head shot from the full body image that DST later mislabeled as Michel Mertz with the caption that Mertz was in Dallas on November 22. (see my previous post of a composite of Souetre v. Mertz.)

Thanks Roger. Unless I'm missing something, does this not beg the question of how Souetre, Mertz and or Roux came to anyone's attention in the first place? Without a written report from INS Texas, whether Dallas or Houston, how did FBI or French authorities know that French citizen(s) had been expelled from the state? I'm checking with Shaw as well. He interviewed one of the agents, and if memory serves it was the Dallas agent directly involved in the initial detention.

Roger, Have you ever located the Dallas INS report? The expulsion process began with them.

Steve, ' . . . In early 1962, when Guerin-Serac first moved to establish Aginter Press, he acted in concert with Robert Leroy, a French SS officer during the war and WWII National Socialist SS officer Otto Skorzeny, both of whom served as the strategic leadership for Aginter. Leroy was a prewar member of Charles Maurras’ Action Française, a Far-Right political group, and then as an active member of La Cagoule’s terrorist underground. He took part in the Requête Carlist militia forces during the Spanish Civil War and then served as a Vichy intelligence operative. He was also a member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne division and was a key member of Otto Skorzeny’s commando forces, where he served as an instructor. Along with Skorzeny, following the end of the war, Leroy served as a lead instructor with Skorzeny’s efforts to train Egyptian leader Abd al-Nasir’s intelligence and security services, after recruiting a hundred German advisers from National Socialist soldiers serving during WWII, the SS underground, and from among technical experts with military industries. The purpose was to train Arab guerrillas in commando tactics and in protecting the former National Socialist technicians working for Nasir from Israeli “hit” teams. The job was carried out at the CIA’s bequest.” Professor Tunander writes revealingly of Aginter: [The] international fascist intelligence network, Aginter Press, was established to implement the Strategy of Tension, with support from the Portuguese security service PIDE and the CIA. This network included a unit specializing in the infiltration of anarchist and pro-Chinese groups, and its “correspondents” would use such organizations as a cover for carrying out bombings and other violent attacks. Aginter Press also included a strategic centre for subversion and intoxication [drugging and poisonings] operations, along with an executive action organization that carried out assassinations (most likely the same “pool of assassins” that William Harvey, CIA station Chief in Italy, had recruited in Europe for the CIA’s “Executive Action Capability”). All of these divisions of Aginter Press were under the leadership of French OAS officer and former US liaison officer Captain Yves Guillou (alias Yves Guerin Serac), in collaboration with Robert Leroy, a former French SS officer, and Otto Skorzeny, a senior German SS officer. [Italics added] A portentous January 1968 affidavit sworn by Aginter Press assassin and Jean Rene Souetre associate Jacques Godard reveals the group’s relationship with certain American persons and organizations: “In the course of our services we had relations with certain persons and organizations like, for example, President Tschombe and with Biafra. We likewise were in charge of relations with the John Birch Society, which was an American political group financed especially by Texas oil producers whose activity is absolutely anti-communist. Everywhere where there is a struggle, either open or covert, with communists, the John Birch Society [JBS] lends its financial aid to the people who are struggling against international communism.” The reader encounters the significance of the Texas oil producers and the Dallas branch of the JBS in Chapter 1, “Lay of the Land,” to further understand the width and breadth of influence of Aginter Press and similar fascist organizations.' — Coup in Dallas

David, of possible interest re. Alfonzo Rodrigues a.k.a. Earle Williamson, from Coup in Dallas . . . ' . . . Prior to its folding, from 1950 through to 1958, Otto Skorzeny was in written communication with WCC president Frank Ryan and vice-president, as well as international playboy and one of Bill Donovan’s OSS agents, Ricardo Sicre. Named in Otto’s private papers, Sicre (frequently using the alias Richard Stickler) had established a training school for spies who crossed into Vichy, France into Spain. After the war, Sicre was installed as a vice president of WCC, adding to a body of evidence that WCC was being used as a privately controlled international espionage and assassination network. In time, he would arrange countless covert arms shipments facilitated under the auspices of WCC, often directly linked to US Military Assistance Advisor Groups. Much of this covert work of which Sicre played a major role involved former CIA Madrid Station Chiefs Alfonzo Rodriquez (1951) and James A. Noel (1963). Rodriguez, a.k.a. Earle Williamson and Wallace Growery, and Noel, a.k.a. Woodrow Olien, each had a lengthy history in agency operations in Cuba as well as Spain (see Endnotes) Whether they were witting participants or not, Rodriguez and Noel serve as a segue between WCC and any serious exposition of the maneuvers among elements of the CIA hierarchy that contributed to the assassination plot.' endnotes Alfonzo Rodriguez: a.k.a. Earl Williamson, a.k.a. Wallace Growery was station chief in Madrid in 1951 as Otto Skorzeny positioned himself in the Spanish capitol to begin his service to the CIA and his lucrative work for not only himself and wife Ilse, but Johannes Bernhardt’s Sofindus, and the World Commerce Corporation. Rodriguez, who had served in Bill Donovan’s OSS during the war, would have been the boss of Al Ulmer who many researchers will recognize as having gone into private business with Win Scott, the former Station Chief in Mexico City at the time of the assassination of JFK. According to records, in 1944 Rodriguez was posted by the Army Counter Intelligence Corps to the OSS, including stints in London and Tangier, where he was vice counsel, affording him ample opportunity to encounter dubious characters named in this investigation. His obituary reads, “After the war, he was assigned to Costa Rica and served as station chief during the revolution there. He was deputy chief of the CIA’s Latin American division in the late 1940s and served in Madrid and Mexico during the 1950s. He was part of the task force that worked with anti-Castro forces in Miami after the attempted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He concluded his career at the CIA as Director of Training. James Noel: Close agency colleague of Rodriguez, James Noel was the CIA Station Chief in Havana at the time of the failed attempt at the Bay of Pigs. In late 1959, Noel had received instructions from Col. J. C. King, chief of the Western Hemisphere for the agency to prepare an analysis of the political situation in Cuba which, for a specific audience in the government hierarchy, that Fidel Castro, under the influence of his closest collaborators had been converted to Communism and that Cubans were preparing to export the revolution throughout the hemisphere to spread the war against capitalism. King then recommended actions to “solve the Cuban problem, including consideration of eliminating Castro.”” Director Dulles then passed on King’s memorandum to the National Security Council which signed off on “Operation 40,” to address the “Cuban” problem. Presided over by VP Richard Nixon, the group included NSA Gordon Gray. The direct Task Force was headed up by Tracy Barnes who we encounter in a significant essay in our appendix focused on the identity of a major player in Pierre Lafitte’s datebook, coded “T.” Tracy Barnes’s team included Gerry Droller, a.k.a. Frank Bender, an egocentric agent at Central Intelligence who appears on a significant date in the 1963 Lafitte datebook. Also named in the datebook is Jack Crichton, among a cadre of Texas oilmen including future president George H.W. Bush that Richard Nixon had assembled to gather necessary funds for the task force.

Steve, you also remark, '"Someone" from the CIA met with him in Madrid in the Spring of 1963.' Wasn’t the CIA meeting in Lisbon? As Major Ralph Ganis writes in The Skorzeny Papers, ‘ . . . In May 1963, a die-hard OAS group made a last-ditch effort to maintain CIA support. On orders from Major Pierre Sergent, who had assumed OAS leadership, Captain Souetre made an attempt to contact American representatives in Lisbon, Portugal. Information concerning the incident is actually found in a declassified CIA report from the period. That report indicates Souetre’s request came to the CIA from a competent American observer,” who was notified by a ”Western-European Journalist in close contact with Captain Souetre” that Souetre desired to meet with the CIA . . . The elephant in the room of any discourse related to Souetre’s role in Dallas is Otto (and his wife Ilse) Skorzeny. Referring to the Lot of the private papers maintained by the Skorzenys that he purchased at auction, Ganis continues . . . The movements of Skorzeny during this period point to his being in attendance at the Lisbon meeting between Souetre and the CIA. In fact, Skorzeny made several trips to Portugal between March and July 1962 concerning his businesses. With the OAS cause now unsustainable, it appears Souetre left the meeting with a new option for employment, signing on with Skorzeny . Further to Lisbon, we write in Coup in Dallas, ‘The July 10, 1963, memorandum sent to the US Department of State’s Intelligence Bureau reveals that Souetre also told the CIA in Lisbon that “he intended to provide some information about the activities of [the OAS] which would be of interest to the US.” Souetre also stated, “in answer to a question on his status in Portugal,” that “he traveled on various passports, one of them being a US passport.” Helms writes that Souetre “claimed to be documented as a naturalized citizen from Martinique” and that “he had US contacts who could arrange documentation.” [Italics added.] And further to what FBI knew, we write . . . ‘On March 9, 1964, the FBI’s S. J. Papich sent a memorandum to FBI official D.J. Brennan bearing the subject “JEAN SOUETRE, INFORMATION CONCERNING.” The memo’s first line states: “Reference is made to cable from Legat, Paris, dated March, 1964.” [Legat, Paris is the FBI representative in the US Embassy in Paris.] The memo continues: “With regard to information in CIA files concerning the subject [Souetre], Mrs. Jane Roman, CIA, advised the Liaison Agent on March 6, 1964, that her agency furnished information to the Bureau by letter dated July 12, 1963, to the State Department captioned ‘OAS Attempt to Enlist the Cooperation of the United States for its anti-de Gaulle Activities,’ a copy of which was designated to the Bureau. In addition, Mrs. Roman furnished the following: (a) A photograph of Souetre (b) A copy of a CIA report dated June 25, 1963, captioned ‘Alleged Plans of Secret Army Organization in Portugal for post-de Gaulle Takeover in France.’ ACTION: The above information and enclosures are being directed to the attention of the Nationalities Intelligence Section.” The attached CIA report was marked “Secret” CIA Information Report marked: “No Foreign Dissemination, No Dissemination Abroad,” and dated June 25, 1963. The report, initially generated in May 1963, bears the subject: “Alleged Plans of Secret Army Organisation in Portugal for post-de Gaulle Takeover in France.” The source for the report’s information is described: “Competent American observer from a Western-European in close touch with Captain Jean Souetre, official of the OAS, from Souetre, who expected the information to reach officials of the US.” The information follows: On 21 May 1963, Rene Souetre*, who claimed to act as external coordinator for the OAS organization based in Portugal, said that after de Gaulle, there would be only two choices in France: Communism or the OAS? Therefore, the OAS believed that it was important to allow de Gaulle to remain in power while the OAS strengthened its organization. Souetre pointed out, however, that the OAS must be prepared to counter a Communist plot at any time, as de Gaulle was an old man and also since he could easily meet with an accident. Souetre smiled as he made this last statement, but hastened to add that the Communists might see fit to assassinate de Gaulle in order to precipitate the revolution. Souetre claimed that the OAS had a list of the Communist penetrations of the French Government and expressed the belief of the OAS that the de Gaulle government was siding with Communist takeover by seeking rapprochement with the USSR. Souetre particularly mentioned what he termed de Gaulle’s “chief advisor,” Jacques Foccart, as being a witting collaborator of the Communists.** The OAS, according to Souetre, was now trying to penetrate the French army and the Government in order to build a counter force to the Communists within the French Government. Souetre explained that the OAS intended to prevent a Communist takeover at the Post-de Gaulle election by the expedient of preventing the election from taking place. *Headquarters [CIA] Comment: Information from both press and official French sources indicates that Souetre is the name of a former French army captain who escaped from a detention camp in 1961. Subsequent to his escape he was alleged to have been involved in an assassination attempt against de Gaulle. Souetre was born 15 October 1930, in the Gironde Department of France. ** Headquarters Comment: Jacques Foccart is the Secretary General to the Presidency for African and Malagasy Affairs. He also has an undetermined role in intelligence matters probably derived from the fact that from 1958 to 1959 he was acting as technical advisor on security and intelligence matters to the President. One of his responsibilities is believed to concern political action in Black Africa, and another that of collating and digesting for the President the intelligence reports from the various French Services.”